The invention relates to the production of hydrogenated amorphous semiconductor carbides, particularly to use in semiconductive devices.
Amorphous semiconductor carbides are useful in a wide variety of devices. Examples include heterojunction solar cells and electroluminescent devices, along with thin film, field effect, memory and display devices.
Amorphous semiconductor carbides are particularly useful for photovoltaic devices which provide a voltage when subjected to radiation or radiate when electrically energized. Unfortunately such devices are not presently competitive with conventional sources of electrical energy.
One attempt to provide comparatively low cost semiconductor carbides has involved the glow discharge decomposition of silane and methane or silane and ethane. Glow discharge decomposition results in undesirable ion bombardment which causes defects in the resulting carbide and requires excessive hydrogen bonding in order to compensate for the defects.
The consequence of the structural defects and the resulting need for additional hydrogen bonding has been to produce materials that are difficult to control and do not have predictable characteristics. In addition, they have displayed serious inadequacies in functioning as photovoltaic and related devices.
Accordingly, it is an object of the invention to achieve the efficient and low cost production of semiconductor carbides with suitable photoresponsive properties. A related object is to achieve suitable photovoltaic and photodetecting devices.
Another object of the invention is to provide for the production of semiconductor carbides with suitable photosensitivity with less cost and complexity than for existing methods.
A further object of the invention is to achieve semiconductor carbides at less cost and with less complexity than for glow discharge and other related production techniques.